Trump’s classified intel leak was about the airplane laptop ban

The United States and Britain are two countries that are currently barring passengers on flights from certain Muslim countries from bringing laptops and tablets in their carry-on luggage. Australia might be the third. On top of that, America is considering extending its ban to all of Europe, according to recent reports.

While it was not clear whether there is a good enough reason to enforce such bans, reports have shown there are concerns that terrorists might build bombs into laptops or tablets and detonate them inside the cockpit.

The threat appears to be even more serious now, as it looks like Trump’s massive security blunder concerns the laptop ban. And Russia knows all about it.

First reported by The Washington Post, Trump’s most recent scandal was widely picked up by more news outlets.

What the most powerful real estate mogul in the world did, according to sources familiar with the matter, was to share with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak highly classified details about an Islamic State terrorist threat related to the use of laptops on planes.

Trump boasted about his knowledge of the looming threat. “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,” he said, and then discussed aspects that were learned through the espionage capabilities of a partner.

Trump revealed the name of the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the threat was detected, information so sensitive that The Post refrained from publishing because officials familiar with the matter warned the paper that such information would jeopardize future intelligence operations.

But now that Russia knows this, it can use the information to detect the spies providing intelligence to the US in the region.

What’s also disturbing is that the partner that collected the information had not given the US permission to share it with Russia. The intelligence-sharing agreement is so sensitive that the details were not even shared with allies. “This is code-word information,” an official said, adding that “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

Even though the White House is trying to deny the massive blunder two things are certain. One, that senior White House officials contacted the CIA and the NSA after Trump made his revelations, which means Trump did blabber mindlessly about security threats. And two, that someone out there was really planning to take out US-bound airplanes with bombs disguised as laptops, if The Post‘s story is accurate.